#geothermal field

[sspacegodd]

This is one place on Earth where life can't live. It is totally lifeless. Without life. Life has ceased to be.

Dallol, a geothermal field in Ethiopia, is full of acidic, salty and hot ponds that don't allow life to form.

A lot like high school.

[blodbranddod]

[sick-and-artistic]

Weird Artifacts

This came into my head and refused to leave. I had to write it down in a drabble, so, enjoy!(?)

It all happened so quickly. Too quickly in fact.

Anakin and Obi-Wan were assigned a mission to retrieve an important artifact from some small planet on the edge of wild space, which was uninhabited and lacked any signs of civilization apart from the abandoned temple-like structure the artifact was supposed to be hidden in.

Though just because it's vacant of sentient life due to a geothermal event that turned its atmosphere unbreathable to most species, it doesn't mean the planet is dead. In fact, it's teeming with life. 

Nature is thriving on this planet. Without outside influences messing with the natural order, evolution inevitably found its way and produced species that could thrive in the new atmosphere.

When they landed close to the temple and stepped off their ship with their breath masks on, they were promptly met with a swell in the force. Curiosity, apprehension. It was clear their not so subtle landing raised the attention of everything in a ten click radius. They decided not to dwell on it for too long, and complete the mission as fast as possible, in order to not disturb the environment any more than they already did. 

“I told you we were coming in too fast,” Obi-Wan argues as they walk through the tall grass, his breath fogging up the inside of his mask. “We're lucky you didn't break anything important. We don't even have comm-reach this far out.” 

Anakin puffs petulantly as the blue-green stalks hit his face from where they reemerge from under Obi-Wan's feet.

“Well we wouldn't have gotten into that situation if you didn't insist on staying in hyperspace until the last second. I told you it was reckless even for me to navigate unmapped regions like that.”

Obi-Wan knows Anakin is right. He was being impatient. He'd much rather be back at the temple, browsing the archives. He was doing exactly that when he was interrupted by a call from the council requesting his and Anakin's presence. He got annoyed then, wondering what kind of nonsense his former Padawan had gotten up to again to warrant a lecture before the high council. Instead, he was surprised when Windu told them they were going away on a mission

Another swell in the force, this time much closer, more concentrated. But it doesn't come from the direction of the temple. It's behind them. Moving.

Once they emerge from the grass field, Obi-Wan stops in his tracks, and so does Anakin.

“I somehow cannot shake the feeling that something is…-” 

“-following us.” Anakin ends his sentence, and their suspicion is confirmed when the grass behind them rustles a bit. Anakin immediately goes to grab his lightsaber from his belt as they both turn around, but Obi-Wan stops him, his hand on Anakin's wrist.

They were being followed. But the being that carefully steps out from the grass is far from something that requires defensive measures.

A young, feline creature, small and quiet, though more elegant and timid than a tooka cat looks up at them with its big, bright eyes. Its black but shimmering purple fur looks smooth and covers the entire slender body, and its soft face is adorned with longer than average whiskers.

Anakin melts a bit when the little creature sits down and observes them curiously, its long tail curling high above it and its sharp ears following the noises of the environment. 

“Obi-Wan…look…” he says and slowly gets down to one knee before stretching out his left hand, trying to lure it closer. 

Normally, Obi-Wan would have objected, telling Anakin to get up and leave it alone. But he didn't have the heart to do so when Anakin looked so enraptured, so… calm. His usually tense expression and heavy set brows softened, soothed by the innocent presence of life in the force. He looked like a child again.

So he stays quiet. Despite his own impatience, he lets Anakin have this moment of peace. 

The cat initially ignores Anakin's attempts at contact, opting to groom its soft paws instead. But seemingly out of nowhere, it stops and gets up to actually walk over to Anakin. It carefully sniffs his hand first, before rubbing its face against his palm and letting him scratch it. 

Obi-Wan can make out Anakin's bright smile from behind him, and he has no choice but to smile in return. 

“Lovely little creature.” he admits quietly, and apparently, that jinxed the entire thing, because right afterwards Anakin yelps and pulls his hand away as the cat sprints off into the grass again.

“It bit me!” he laments, shaking his hand and regretting presenting his healthy one as he adjusts his breath mask.

Obi-Wan actually has to suppress a laugh. “It's a wild animal, Anakin. That's to be expected. I'm surprised it even let you touch it in the first place.” he says amusedly, but Anakin's crestfallen expression almost immediately wipes his smirk from his face.

“Are you hurt?” he then asks genuinely, and Anakin looks at his hand, observing the little dots of injured skin that start to leak droplets of blood. 

“I'm fine…” he says, still pouting as he wraps a piece of cloth around his palm. He's had worse injuries. Much worse. The stump of his right arm seizes uncomfortably at the thought. 

Obi-Wan apparently accepts his reply.

“Come on, let's get going then.” 

Anakin trails behind him while they walk through the abandoned temple, the only light source now the blue hue of their lightsabers.

Their mission directive had a clear description of where they are supposed to find the artifact, where it had been hidden a long time ago. And to both of their relief, it's exactly in the described spot. 

Perched on top of a column was a prism shaped…box? 

“Is this it?” Anakin asks, stepping closer as Obi-Wan checks his datapad. 

“Apparently it's supposed to be a…sphere.” Obi-Wan says, confusion clear in his voice. He looks down at his datapad again, immersing himself into the descriptive text. 

“Then it should be inside, right?” 

“Probably, yes…” Obi-Wan replies absently, trying to focus on the directive, but his datapad seems to malfunction. He taps it, frowning when it freezes up and glitches.

Anakin, being Anakin, doesn't want to wait for Obi-Wan's instructions and takes the approach he always does. The most efficient one. He grabs one edge of the prism, and pries it open, revealing a dimly glowing sphere on the inside.

“Hah, see? Easy peasy.” he says triumphantly. 

Obi-Wan didn't really notice what Anakin was doing until he heard part of the prism clatter to the ground, and now Anakin was reaching for the artifact with his bare hand. 

“Wait- Anakin don't-!” He tries to warn, but it's already too late. 

~~

When Obi-Wan wakes again, he's on the ground. On the cold, hard floor of the abandoned temple, in fact. Memories of what just happened come rushing back, and he sits up rapidly, observing his surroundings. There seems to have been some kind of…blast. The rocks that have laid strewn around the room before, were now shoved over to the edges, tracks of their movement in the dust. 

It must have been triggered by whatever it was Anakin touched. 

Anakin

He remembers then, and alerted by the utter silence in the room, turns around to where Anakin is. Or where he was. 

His blood runs cold when instead of his moody former Padawan, all he sees is a pile of clothes on the floor. Anakin's clothes. Along with his lightsaber, lying uselessly on the ornamental tile.

He can feel anger and disbelief rising up in himself, clenching his throat and threatening to make his eyes burn with tears. He desperately tries to release those feelings into the force as he gets up and calls out for his friend. His brother. His partner. 

He rubs his beard in a self-soothing manner when he gets no reply, and he really tries hard not to panic. 

What would he tell the council? That he lost the Chosen One because he randomly evaporated after stupidly touching some artifact?

He pulls at his own hair while scanning the walls, hoping the boy just wanted to play a trick on him and was hiding somewhere. Tears have just started running down his face when he hears some muffled noises coming from the pile of robes and tabards. 

He turns around again to look, and frowns when he sees the pile move. Or more like, something inside the pile is moving. He crouches down to disentangle the vast layers of cloth, and his heart threatens to jump out of his chest from how fast it's beating. 

Looking up at him now, scared and ears laid flat feebly, was one of the cat-creatures from earlier. 

His mind is going a mile a minute, and he refuses to believe the conclusion it comes to about Anakin's whereabouts. 

Unlike the one they met earlier, this one has tan colored fur, golden almost, blonde, with dark areas around its snout, ears and paws. Its eyes are a striking blue, a blue he has come to know oh so well.

Despite his mind not wanting to comprehend it, his lips speak before he can stop himself. 

“Anakin?” he asks, his voice shaky. 

The cat responds with a quiet chirp, and Obi-Wan feels like he might faint. 

“Force help me-” he whispers, willing himself to wake up and end this odd nightmare. But he doesn't wake up.  Somehow, having to explain this to the council seems worse.

[monstersandmaw]

Male centipede-alien x transmasc nonbinary reader (nsfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Final commission from my batch of five! For @mongoose-king!

Content: sassy, confident, transmac reader, non-penetrative sex, oral sex, 't-cock' used for human's genitals, no other areas specified/mentioned. Brief threat to life (not from monster), some mention of isolation on a planet. And a giant pet slug. Wordcount: 6749

“Well. That’s… unexpected,” you croaked, staring incredulously at the small screen on the sleeve of your white space suit as it blinked a red and improbable warning at you.

The planet wasn’t exactly hostile to humans, but the harsh sun and arid air made being outside for long periods of time pretty uncomfortable for humans, and the oxygen levels were low enough that it made you dizzy if you didn’t take a gulp from your suit’s mask from time to time at the very least.

You were quite possibly the only other sapient being within about nine thousand miles, but while you were cataloguing obscure and previously unknown kinds of invertebrate, the research team on the literal other side of the world were geologists from Meliikos Prime, and they didn’t speak Galactic Common very well. They’d been polite enough when you’d hailed them out of courtesy when you’d flown in though, and when they’d discovered you were human, they’d beamed over their extensive survey data of the terrain and marked off water supplies too, which you’d thought was pretty nice of them.

Other than rocks and a few cool bugs though, there really wasn’t anything to write home about on this planet; certainly nothing that was going to win you any research accolades. It wasn’t on any of the major hyperspace links, there were no relay stations in this quadrant, and so far, other than a supremely flamboyant species of flatworm living in a toxic geothermal pool near your research ship, and a type of slug as big as a golden retriever that, rather relatably, hadn’t moved in over a week, there wasn’t anything of note here at all.

And yet, the general alert on your space suit had just calmly announced that a heavy cruiser bearing the insignia and codes of the Porphaerian Empire was inbound to your location and all civilians of the Republic were advised to evacuate the planet as soon as possible and make their way to the nearest Bastion. You weren’t even sure where the nearest military outpost was, given that the ever-belligerent Porphaerian Empire had never shown any interest in invertebrates on remote planets before, and this planet in particular sat on the outer reaches of the known universe and was so bloody insignificant that it hadn’t even acquired a proper name. It was still just: OR-2559-B.

“The fuck?” It came out as a little strangled yelp as you looked up into the purple-ish blue of your dear OR-2559-B’s atmosphere to find the silhouette of a huge ship appearing out of the veil of wispy clouds that whisked and drifted around on the upper currents. These things were only supposed to exist in immersive VR cinemas, and only then to get blown up by plucky pilots operating under astronomically small odds. Plucky you might have been, but you were neither a pilot nor currently in possession of anything more powerful than a handheld scanner for identifying the chemical composition of various types of bug goop. Your ship didn’t even have cannons, though there was a small pistol under the console, just in case.

You snatched up the tray of samples you’d spent the last three hours taking from the placid wildlife around the stream and legged it back towards the small and laughably fragile buggy that you used to cover greater distances into the field from your research ship. By the time you’d jounced over the rough terrain of the plateau and yelled at your little buggy to please find a little more juice in her batteries to get you up the hill at a pace faster than a mildly-inconvenienced slug, you saw other shapes flitting like bats around the underside of the huge cruiser. Fighters.

“Oh come on,” you groaned. Your ship lowered the ramp as it detected your approach and you steered the wheezing buggy up the incline and into the cargo hold, tripping over the side of the roll cage as you floundered to exit the darned thing, and raced to the hatch that would lead you up into the cockpit.

Sweeping a week’s worth of papers and vac-packed ration wrappers off the console, you punched in your code and yelled at the ship to come out of its sleepy hibernation state, which it did with enviable efficiency.

“Hostile signatures detected,” she said in that irritatingly calm voice she had under all circumstances.

“Well the fuck aware, thank you. Now, can we get out of here please?”

The brief thought flickered across your mind that it probably wouldn’t help matters if the ship’s AI screamed at you in panic instead of speaking in a monotone if she blew something down in the engine room, but you had little time to dwell on that as a larger fighter roared right past the windshield and a huge energy blast swept over the ship.

Instinctively, you covered your face and closed your eyes, and when the accompanying cloud of dust and debris had finished raining down and clinking off the glass and metal structure of the ship, you realised she had gone eerily quiet. “Girlie?” you exhaled into the relative silence.

Nothing. Hell, you’d take that dull monotone over this any day.

Opening your eyes and lowering your arms, your body flooded with adrenaline when you saw that all her screens were dark, and the lights had gone off. “Oh, you fucking assholes!” you yelled in the vague direction of the enemy cruiser. “You want my bug slime? Fine! Take it! But you leave my fucking ship alone!”

It was strange what came out of your mouth in times of stress, but you weren’t given the luxury of being able to the psychology of a lone human put suddenly under the immense pressure of an unforeseen and life-threatening situation, because a small fighter landed outside and you scrabbled under the console to retrieve the pistol that you’d placed there on the off-chance you ran into something that thought a scrawny research scientist in a space suit looked more appealing than its usual diet.

A blaster bolt battered its way through the hull of your ship and several more created an enormous smoking hole where the hatch had been, and you stood there, wide eyed, as three Porphaerian soldiers appeared like cartoon villains out of the twisting black smoke. They were all wearing black, form-fitting space suits made of some fancy, matte, composite material, and a shiny, black helmet with a blacked-out visor that revealed nothing of their slightly reptilian features underneath. Their three-fingered hands were also gloved, and they all bore a weapon of some kind: the one at the front of the trio had a blaster, while the one to their left — your right — had some kind of bludgeon that zapped with a purple energy at one end, and the other had a net that crackled with the same energy and a trident with barbed points.

“What do you want?” you chirped, hoping you sounded more composed than you felt. You tightened your hold on the grip of your pistol at your side, and glared at them. “And why are you blowing holes in my baby girl’s hull? She’s a scientist. What’s she ever done to you?”

Your words and tone seemed to confuse the leader of the three Porphaerians for a moment, and they froze, tilting their helmeted head to one side. Seven foot tall, bipedal, with four arms and a long, slashing tail that whipped back and forth behind it like a lizard in a tizzy, they should have been intimidating, but you were so damned outraged at the whole situation, it was hard to be fully afraid. The one to their left let out a growl and chittered something in their incomprehensible language. That was just one of the many things that made the bloody Porphaerians think they were better than everyone else: they had the most convoluted and complicated method of communication out of almost all known species.

“Well, what the fuck do you want?” you barked. As if you had somewhere else you needed to be.

With a put-upon sigh, the leader began to talk in Galactic Common, though their mouth full of pointed teeth wasn’t really equipped for its syllables. “You are in… possession of… a substance that is of… interest to our Great and Glorious Empire.”

You blinked. “You guys… really do want my bug slime?”

“Your… what?”

“I’m a scientist. I’m studying invertebrates. Bugs. The slug outside — its name is Goldie, by the way, and it had better not have come to any harm because of you losers — has become a bit of a mascot in the week and a half it’s been resting on that rock.”

“We are not here for… ‘bugs’.”

“Then I’ve got nothing for you, buddy,” you said with a slightly wild grin that was about 99% panic. If you had nothing to offer them, they’d probably just kill you for the inconvenience of a wasted trip. “But if you tell me more about what you’re after, then perhaps I can help?” You had no intention of actually helping them, but stalling them was going to buy you a few more precious minutes to think of a way out of this, so you took it.

“You are… researching… the refractive properties of… a newly-discovered mineral,” the leader said in stilted Common. “Surrender your research and all samples, and we will leave you unharmed.”

Minerals. Shit, that was the nice team from Meliikos Prime.

“I see that you are cognisant of our request.”

“I… what? No.” You stuck your thumb comically towards your chest and grinned, “Bug guy. Not rocks. And that was not a request either. You guys need to work on your Common. Your vocab is seriously lacking.”

One of them twitched their head as if something had come in over the comms, and all three of them tightened their grip on their weapons.

“Seems like you were telling the truth,” the leader scoffed and raised their blaster.

You barely got to duck out of the way before a shot went off, but when you rolled and came up, you saw that the hole where they’d been standing was now empty. A second later, you heard scuttling on the roof of your ship and panic set in for the first time.

The tapping of many legs skittered across the roof and towards the gap in the side, and then at the top of the hole caused by the Porphaerian’s blaster damage, a creature appeared, peering down over the torn and burned edge of the hole. At first, all you saw was a pair of long, caramel brown antennae investigating the space, but a head soon followed, adorned with colossal, mean looking mandibles that could probably punch a second hole through your poor ship’s hull with even less effort than the blaster bolt.

“What the fuck?” you coughed, reeling backwards. You’d never seen any sign of a centipede that size on this planet. When you spotted one of the Porphaerians moving in the limited view outside though, raising their weapon, you yelped and flailed your arms to get it to move, “Watch out!”

In a sinuous motion, the creature looked up, hissed, and slithered on its series of many, jointed legs down to where the Porphaerian was now standing. It reared up, lashing out with forelegs that looked at once deadly and fragile, like alabaster in the strange light of the planet’s atmosphere, and then in a flash, it lunged for the neck of its would-be attacker and closed its steel-jaw mandibles around it. A green fluid burst like an overripe fruit, and you wondered if that was Porphaerian blood or the creature’s venom. The second Porphaerian was caught by the whiplash of its tail and flung into the side of their fighter ship, and the third was nowhere to be seen.

When the centipede-like creature was done decapitating, it turned around and regarded you. It wasn’t just a giant centipede, you realised, as it had more of an upper torso section, with armoured ‘shoulders’ and a couple of limbs at the top that were more like arms with hands than the sickle-like claws that adorned the rest of the legs on its long, segmented, chocolate brown body, and it was regarding you from black, beady eyes with obvious intellect.

Only when it paused, staring at you while your charred ship smoked like something forgotten on a barbecue, did you notice that it had a kind of bandoleer around those shoulders, though it didn’t have cartridges or ammunition that you could see. Instead, there were pockets and some kind of comms device, and… you frowned. “You’re… with the Republic?” you faltered when you saw the insignia.

The alien nodded.

“You have any idea why the fuck the fucking Porphaerian Empire was after my little research ship? Actually, scratch that. They said they were after some funky mineral and — oh God, the geology guys! They —”

The creature chittered something at you, and while you didn’t understand it, you realised it had a distinct air of impatience, with a touch of exasperation thrown in too.

“What?”

Its chitinous shoulders drooped and it scuttled a little closer to the blackened hole in your ship before rearing up and peering in like a dog looking out of a window. You almost laughed, and then realised you were probably a little hysterical from all the adrenaline.

In a rasping, scraping voice, the creature said in Galactic Common, “The team from Meliikos are safe. They told me about you. I came to get you. We need to leave.” Then, after casting a quick, backwards glance, they added, “Now.”

And before you could do so much as grab your favourite pencil from your workstation, the creature had slithered into the ship, scooped you up in its uppermost arms, and was retreating at what felt like a hundred miles an hour out of the shell of your destroyed ship, and out towards the rocky plateau at the bottom of the slope.

As you passed the seemingly-dormant giant slug, you chuckled as it raised its head, eye-stems appearing, and you waved. “So long, Goldie! Take care! I’ll miss our chats!”

“Are you… alright?” the centipede-alien asked, sounding genuinely concerned for your sanity.

Perhaps you’d been alone on OR-2559-B for a few months too long after all. With a shrug, you let yourself be jostled lightly along in their arms and tried not to watch the mesmeric pattern of their honey-gold legs as they rippled beneath their segmented body over the uneven terrain. “Goldie’s been by my side since I got here. I’ve shared most of my research with her. I’m 95% sure she has some pretty nuanced opinions on that comedy military drama thing that came out on earth about a hundred years ago…”

“I will have you checked out by our ship’s medic,” the centipede-alien said as they thundered over the terrain, and you laughed and settled into their arms. Your research had been funded by the Republic, so if one of their soldiers had been sent to rescue you, they could file the reports and figure out what happened next. Honestly, as much as you’d formed an attachment to the community of flamboyant flatworms and the super-gigantic slug, you were suddenly looking forward to an excuse to go off-world and, you know, interact with people again. You just had to make it past the heavy cruiser and its fleet of fighters first.

It turned out that your centipede friend was part of some kind of elite team that made extraction from a hostile environment look like a visit to the archives, and you were tucked away in the corner of their nippy little shuttle while an alien of a species you didn’t recognise, with a crown of antlers and skin like a red nebula, piloted you away from the Porphaerians and out into deeper space. It was one of the roughest take-offs you’d ever endured, but it worked, and it was oddly heart-warming when the Meliikos team all looked around and waved at you in obvious relief when the centipede-alien brought you on board the Republic ship.

The ship’s medic turned out to be really nice, and when you explained that your supplies had all been left on the research ship along with literally the rest of your life in space, they set you up again with your regular prescriptions, and checked you over. After you’d recovered from the aftereffects of the shock, they were happy to discharge you, and you headed out to explore the ship.

Just as you waved your hand in front of the release mechanism for the medbay door though, it was opened by someone from outside, and you took a step back to avoid a collision. The person on the other side halted abruptly in the doorway — literally filling the doorway — and you tipped your head up to take in the full sight of them. It was your saviour, and you grinned at them at the same time as they made a kind of chittering with their thick, black mandibles and waggled their long antennae.

“Hey,” you smiled. “Listen, thanks for getting me out of there like that. I was kind of out of it on the ride over. I never got your name.”

A series of distinctive clicks and chatters left the creature, and you grimaced.

“You got a Galactic Common alternative? My mouth doesn’t, uh… move like that.” The more you thought about their mouth though, the more interested you were in them. They really were beautiful, with a mahogany brown, segmented body and paler legs, and a head with a woodgrain pattern that you hadn’t noticed before.

The centipede alien nodded and laughed, and then said in that harsh voice like bending steel, “I’ve been called ‘Kerritt’ before by humans because of the sound of my name in my own language. You may call me Kerritt, and I use the human equivalent of male pronouns. What should I call you?”

You told him, and he nodded seriously.

“Are you feeling well? I could show you around the ship, but the First Officer would like to speak with you before we do anything else. She sent me down to see if you are well enough to have an audience with her.”

He spoke in short, stilted phrases and his upper body swayed a little. The majority of his body was like that of a giant centipede, but he had a definite waist section that was different from the rest of the segments of chitin and it rose vertically while the rest of him stayed parallel to the ground. And yes, those uppermost limbs were definitely more like arms, with hands that ended in chitinous points and sections of chitin that were more like bracers and gauntlets. His eyes were glossy black, almond shaped, and huge. The way they were placed far apart on his insectoid head was really rather sweet as he regarded you attentively, his long antennae constantly waving up and down in a slow, mesmeric pattern.

“I’m good,” you nodded. “Bit shaken up, and confused as heck, but I’m good. Let’s go talk to your First Officer. Maybe she can explain why the fuck the Porphaerians mistook the bugs guy for the rocks guys.”

He chuckled. “The Meliikosian team will take offence if you call them the ‘rocks guys’,” he said as he turned around in a sinuous curve and began to lead you up the ship’s gleaming corridor towards the bridge. “They are a proud and reserved people.”

“Nah, we’re cool. They like me. They waved at me when you brought me on board. In their culture, that’s practically a marriage proposal, right?”

Again, Kerritt laughed. “Perhaps. Though if you’re so easy to get along with, why did your university send you to one of the most remote places in the entire universe?”

“Ouch! Actually, the Head of the Department was so jealous of my research that she got me funding for a project that would take me as far from the capital as it’s possible to go…” you said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Really?”

“No,” you snorted. “I have an insatiable hunger for the unknown, and some trader mentioned that a cargo pilot said that a friend of hers said there were weird bugs on OR-2559-B. So, I got funding and headed out.”

“That’s… convoluted,” Kerritt said diplomatically. “You went all that way to study invertebrates? Are there none on your planet?”

You eyed him up and down and watched his antennae pull back a little. Was that trepidation? “Sure there are, but what can I say? I’m a dedicated researcher.”

“Right.”

The conversation with the First Officer didn’t last long. She was a colossal Grummgarian with orange-yellow skin and horns on her chin, and absolutely zero patience. When she realised that the only reason you’d drawn Porphaerian attention was by accident, she informed you that you’d be dropped off at the Bastion and would be provided with transport passes back to your university, before she dismissed you with a wave of her three-fingered hand and Kerritt escorted you from the bridge.

“A bit of warning would have been nice,” you shot sidelong at him as the doors closed behind you with a soft thunk.

“There is no warning adequate for that woman,” he said dryly. “You were better off going in cold. Shall I give you a tour of the ship?”

You nodded and followed him as he helped you get your bearings. “Tell me about yourself?” you asked. “I mean, I’ve met a few different species, but I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

“Oh,” he said, and clicked his mandibles. “Do you wish to study me too then? Since I am technically an invertebrate myself, after all.”

“Maybe, if you’ll let me,” you said with a wink and watched his antennae pull back again.

“I think I could be persuaded,” he replied. “I’ve not had much contact with your kind either. I didn’t expect you to be so…” he leaned down and tilted his head “… soft. How did you survive the atmosphere of OR-2559-B? I was led to believe that you require higher oxygen levels for respiration?”

“Space suit,” you said. “It did make me a bit dizzy sometimes, but you know, that can be fun too, under the right circumstances.”

“My sources were right about one thing,” Kerritt said dryly as he drew himself back up to his usual posture.

“What’s that?”

“Humans have strange preferences.”

“Baby, you have no idea,” you laughed, shaking your head. “Come on, let’s finish this tour before I keel over. I’m exhausted.”

The two of you traded light conversation back and forth as he led you up corridors and companionways until that banter devolved steadily into cautious but very much overt flirting, and when he left you at the door to what would be your quarters for the short hop to the Republic Bastion, you said, “If I weren’t so tired that I might pass out before the fun even gets started, I’d invite you in.”

“Another time,” he said with a sympathetic bow of his head. “My quarters are up the corridor, should you need me. I’m off duty for a while now.”

“Nice. And thanks for showing me round.”

Kerritt gave another nod, and then he left.

You watched him go down the corridor to another door, his legs rippling in a sinuous sequence to take him forward, and you remembered how it felt to be carried along in his arms and shivered. Your body was running on fumes, but your brain still liked the memory of that strange, chitinous creature holding you in his arms.

You barely had the energy to shower in the cramped en suite, but once you’d changed into something more comfortable and less singed and gritty than your current outfit, you fell onto the bed and slept for sixteen hours straight.

When you woke and dressed, and staggered out into the corridor, your first port of call was the refectory to silence your growling stomach, but everything was closed since it wasn’t the ship’s mealtime. A diminutive creature with four arms and scaled, purple skin looked up from one of the tables in the empty dining area though and chirped something that sounded like an exclamation.

“Wait, human! Kerritt told me about you!” They had a head like a snake and thick spines all down their back, and although they wore clothing over their top half, their lower half was a thick, sinuous tail that uncoiled as they pushed back from the table and made their way over to you. “You want some food? I’ve never cooked for a human before. There aren’t any on this ship, and I joined the Mantis straight from the academy. I had to look up recipes for you in the species guide! I’m not sure what you’d like, but I made six earth dishes for you to choose from. They’re keeping warm now. I didn’t know when you’d be by.”

Their enthusiasm was almost overwhelming after a sleep that was essentially a fully-blown hibernation, but you nodded and let them lead you into the kitchen where you chose something that vaguely resembled beef chilli, though the beans weren’t the usual ones. They were turquoise blue, but they tasted ok.

You were about halfway through an enormous bowl of it when Kerritt entered the dining hall looking tense. That was, he looked tense until he saw you, at which point he sighed and scuttled over in that smooth way you found so attractive, his body moving like a ribbon between the tables.

“You’re awake,” he said when he reached you. “Are you alright? I had to ask the ship’s computer if there was still life detected in your quarters.”

You laughed long and loud. “Yeah, I do that sometimes. Sorry. Yeah, I’m good. Turns out my faithful little research ship, rest in pieces, wasn’t actually built for long-term habitation, because my god the mattress in my bunk here is like sleeping on a cloud, I swear.” You took another spoonful of ‘chilli’ and asked, “How’s things?”

“The ship is on course to dock at the Bastion in seventeen hours,” he said, apparently not sure quite what you’d meant. “Everyone is interested in meeting a human. They have been asking me many questions about you.”

“Oh? What did you tell them?”

“That I have only known you a few hours and cannot speak on your behalf.”

You smiled at him and shook your head. “Ah, you’re a good soul, you know that, Kerritt? I like you. Tell you what, when I’ve finished this… uh… ‘chilli’, you can introduce me to your friends.”

He nodded. “May I keep you company until then?”

“I’d love that,” you replied. “You can tell me how the Republic knew about the attack in the first place.”

While he was talking, a few people drifted in and approached when they saw that you were there, talking with Kerritt. It seemed like he was something of a hero among the crew himself, and the array of non-humans aboard varied from the reptilian cook with their purple skin to another invertebrate built more like a spider than a centipede, and several humanoid species, though the differences between you and them were marked. Long after you’d finished your chilli, you were all still gathered around your table, chatting and laughing together, and as people left to tend to their duties or head to their bunks for their downtime, you remarked to Kerritt what a tight-knit crew they had.

He nodded. “We’ve seen a lot of action together in the Vith Sector. It has a way of bonding a crew.”

“For sure,” you said, turning more serious. That sector was where the Porphaerians had been making their most aggressive moves in the last decade of their expansion. You sighed and stretched your neck a little.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Mm. Might walk around a bit for a while. Stretch my legs. Wanna join me?”

He bowed his head and scuttled back from where he’d been coiled up on himself while you’d been talking. His legs moved like clockwork parts, clicking on the shiny floor of the refectory, and you bit your lip and ached to touch.

His mandibles drifted a little further apart for a moment, and you got the impression he was scenting the air, but he took it no further and you tried hard to ignore how attractive you found him and his strange body while you walked the ship’s halls together.

Down in engineering, you visited one of the people you’d just met, and they showed you a few details of how the ship’s engine worked, until you started yawning again, and Kerritt took you back up to the corridor with the living quarters.

“You know, I’m tired, but I'm not actually all that sleepy,” you said. “I think it’s just the stress of what happened.”

“Perhaps… you would like to relax in my room? The permanent crew’s quarters are much bigger than the guest room you were assigned.”

“Sure,” you said with a smile. “Thank you.”

He continued down the corridor to his own room and you followed at his side.

“You know,” you said as he tapped a wristband to the reader in front of his door and it opened almost silently, “I never thanked you for saving my life. Those were some pretty badass moves back there. I’ve never had anyone defend me like that.”

His antennae flicked back in what you were now certain was a bashful expression, and he shrugged one chitinous shoulder. “My unit is trained to handle unusual situations.”

“I count as an unusual situation, do I?”

“I�� what?”

“You handled me pretty well.”

If his entirely-black eyes could have rolled, you were certain they would have done, but he waved his hand in front of the door panel and it shut before anyone else on the ship could overhear you. 

“You are very… forward, human,” he said, coming closer; close enough to touch.

You reached slowly for his ‘chest’ — or at least, for the section of his body that rose vertically, and which had much smaller segmented parts than the rest of him — and you held your hand out, palm facing him, just a few centimetres from his body. “May I?” you breathed.

He nodded. His own body had gone utterly still. All those mechanical legs holding him rigid as he tilted his head down to regard you, antennae pricked forwards.

Your hand connected with his cool body and a shudder ran through him from head to tail. A second later, lines of neon, bioluminescent green flashed along the length of his body and you gasped, taking your hand away in surprise before pressing it back down and watching the light pulse out a second time. “God, you’re beautiful. Can you feel that then?”

“Yes. Touch is our primary sense.”

You’d suspected as much, but you’d wanted to be sure. You brought your right hand up to meet your left and stood slowly, running your hands up his chest. All the while, his natural bioluminescence pulsed along his body, beginning at the point where you touched him and zipping down the segments of his body like lightning in a regular pattern. The chitin beneath your fingertips felt like glass: smooth and cool and oddly fragile. Your fingers traced the line of one of the segments that sat like armour on his shoulders and he gave another soft gasp and a shiver.

“May I touch you?” he asked.

“God yes,” you laughed, and he brought his clawed hands to your waist then up your torso and neck to rake the points of his fingertips across your scalp. For a second, your soul felt like it left your body and you tipped your head back and moaned.

“You enjoy touch too.”

“Unnfff.”

“Yes?”

You nodded.

“May I pick you up?”

A second and more enthusiastic “unnfff,” left your lips and he chuckled, lowering his mouth towards you for just an instant before he twitched backwards. “Mm?” you asked, only dimly aware that he was actually carrying you across the room towards his wide, comfortable bed now.

“I have to be careful. I have a lot of venom. It’s deadly to humans. Deadly to most species, actually.”

“Oh. I guess that means I can’t kiss you there then.”

“I have to inject my venom for it to be dangerous,” he said, “But I still have to be careful. It’s something of a reflex when I am… aroused.”

“I turn you on, huh?” you slurred cheekily.

“Yes.”

You loved how direct he was, and as he laid you down on the bed and moved his fingers to pause at the fastening of your clothes, you nodded before he could ask permission. He still did, of course, but it was more of a formality at that point. He raked his claws experimentally over your skin, so light it almost tickled, and you arched off the bed.

“I can smell you,” he said when he’d let your clothes fall to the floor. “May I taste you?”

You nodded, desperate to feel his mandibles against your skin. You were swollen and hard and sensitive already, and when he parted his huge mandibles wide to reveal his mouth and a black tongue, you bucked and whimpered and parted your legs for him.

The feel of his tongue exploring up the inside of your thighs was a torture of the best kind, and by the time he closed his mouth around your t-cock, you felt like you might come just from the touch alone. You had no idea what words came tumbling out of your mouth, but he let out a rumbling growl that made his whole body shake and pulse with light again, and you nearly yelled as he dug his claw-like hands into the muscle of your thighs.

You couldn’t think terribly clearly as he got back to work in earnest, practically worshipping your body with his mouth, his onyx mandibles raised just safely enough not to puncture your body but not far enough away that the wicked sharp tips didn’t prick your skin from time to time. His antennae glanced against your waist and shoulders from time to time and you had to restrain yourself from grabbing onto them. They were not horns, and you might even hurt him if you did. It was tantalising and you thrust your head back into the pillow behind you and let out a long, yowling cry of pleasure as you got closer and closer to coming.

Kerritt picked you up again, lifting you right off the bed with ease, and he brought the smooth segments of his lower body to touch yours as he lay down facing you on the bed beside you, encasing you in the cage of his many legs. The feeling of being held and almost immobilised was intoxicating, and you reached a hand up for his head and gripped around the smooth, curved contour of one mandible. He groaned again and you grabbed for the other with your free hand.

“How careful do I have to be with these?” you asked in a rough voice.

They parted and flexed just a little under your hold, but you could feel the immense strength behind them. You’d been right when you’d thought idly that they could punch through steel. One bite from those and you’d be dead.

“Not that careful,” he said, clearly amused behind his growing arousal.

He rubbed his glowing body slowly against you, catching your cock just perfectly with a smooth segment and you wrapped both legs around between two pairs of his legs to adjust the angle and the pressure. He was getting wet from the opening in his carapace, and the combined mess you were making was enough to set your head spinning.

“I’m gonna come,” you breathed as he picked up his pace, fucking against you more wildly with each of your pounding heartbeats. “Oh god, you’re going to make me come.”

“I’m close too,” he said, and you felt his mandibles start to shake and tremble in your grip. “I want to bite you,” he groaned. “I’m going to bite —”

The thick ring of his black mandibles slipped from your hold and in the blink of an eye they’d closed around your neck like a collar. You came with a blinding intensity, bucking against him while his hot tongue pressed against your throat.

A second later, his whole body locked up and he spilled over you in a rush of hot come that went up your stomach and down between your thighs while his whole body spasmed helplessly. His tail curled around you, locking you even more securely in place while his orgasm wracked his entire body, his legs tightening like the jaws of a bear trap against your naked body.

Eventually he stopped and went slack on the bed, and his mandibles opened slowly. All the chinks in his chitinous armour glowed a steady, quiescent green, and his antennae felt and tested at your neck. You nearly laughed at the tickling contrast between the powerful jaws and tender antennae.

“Did I hurt you? Tell me I didn’t hurt you,” he croaked.

“M’good,” you smiled and kissed one black, glossy mandible before he raised it completely out of reach.

He sighed with relief. “I’m sorry. My kind tend to lock in place during… you know. I thought perhaps with you it would be different, but… I’m sorry. It was a risk I shouldn’t have taken with you.”

“S’all good,” you said, your mind blissfully foggy in the wake of the best orgasm you’d had in months. “Come back here,” you said, petting the side of your neck to try and get him to hold you there again with his mandibles.

He did return his grip to your neck, and he slowly coiled his entire body around yours again while the two of you came down together.

“I think you’ve ruined sex with any other species for me after that,” you mumbled a while later.

Carefully, he withdrew his mandibles from you again and nuzzled the smooth top of his head against you, making a soft, crooning noise akin to purr.

“As I think you have for me,” he rumbled.

Without warning, the door to his quarters opened with its near silent sigh of metal on metal, and someone strode in, looking down at a screen in their hand. “Hey, Kerritt, I need you to sign this report for —”

Kerritt drew you even closer to him, masking you completely from whoever had intruded, and he hissed loudly at them over your head like a cobra.

“Shit! Sorry!” they barked, clearly as taken by surprise at the hissing as he had been by their arrival. “You never have company. I just… I’m so sorry! I’ll… uh… it can wait.”

You started laughing even before he set you back down on the bed, and by the time he had relaxed enough to draw back from his protective hold on you, your laugh had turned into a proper cackle.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he snapped.

“I’ve never had a partner hiss at someone to defend my dignity,” you said, wiping tears from your eyes and pushing up onto one elbow.

He regarded you flatly, and you reached carefully for the nearest antenna, running your fingertip along it before encircling it suggestively with thumb and fingers until he gave another huge, full-body shiver and let out a little moan, light pulsing again.  

“It’s sweet, that’s all,” you smiled and then asked, “You think you’ve got another one in you, big guy?”

“Keep touching me like that and find out,” Kerritt muttered, rolling onto his back, at once docile and provocative, and letting all the tightly-coiled segments of his body unfurl for you like a fern. That light still darted along him whenever you touched him, flaring to life to telegraph just how turned on he was by you.

This time, you rode him to orgasm, rocking your hips back and forth over his slit until you both came a second time.

Watching a creature as powerful as he was come so completely undone beneath you was probably one of the best sights you’d ever seen.

__

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[a-dinosaur-a-day]

My favorite group of Mesozoic dinosaurs are the sauropods, do you have any fun sauropod info?

The adaptations that allowed sauropods to get big are the same ones that allowed theropods to fly!

Sauropods *didn't* use gizzard stones!

Sauropods were able to maintain a consistent internal body temp through the force of their giant bodies alone!

The closer a Sauropod gets to the Colossosaurs (the really big titanosaurs), the fewer fingers it has! Column feet!

Sauropods probably used their long necks for display and possibly for intraspecific combat!

Most sauropods were so big cryptic coloration would have been useless and they were too big to be hunted anyway, so they were probably very colorful!

While everyone knows Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, they are actually part of one of the least diverse and common sauropod groups!

Sauropods were MORE successful in the Cretaceous, not less!

Titanosaur phylogeny is a mess from which we will never escape!

Sauropods breathed like birds!

Sauropods had bones like birds!

Some sauropods had beaks!

Sauropod teeth tell you a lot about how they ate - some had peg like teeth, others more spade like, and they cropped off plants in different ways!

We are still arguing about how Sauropods may have held their necks!

The first Sauropods appeared in the Triassic of Southeast Asia!

Some sauropods used lava fields and other places of geothermal activity to brood their nests!

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Landmannalaugar

Landmannalaugar is a location in Iceland's Fjallabak Nature Reserve in the Highlands. It is on the edge of the Laugahraun lava field. This lava field was formed by an eruption in approximately 1477. It is largely known for its natural geothermal hot springs and surrounding landscape.

Photographer: Witold Ziomek

[manessha545]

El Tatio, Chile: The thermal activity in Tatio covers an area of approximately 10 km2 and includes more than 80 types of geysers among fumaroles, water, boiling mud ponds, bubbling ponds and springs....El Tatio is a geothermal field with many geysers located in the Andes Mountains of northern Chile at 4,320 metres above mean sea level. It is the third-largest geyser field in the world and the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Wikipedia

[grapejuicedragoon]

Godzilla Deicide- AU more content! the drawings are colored sketches so they aren't very polished and not the best ^ ^;. Upgraded Gigan: After being betrayed by monster zero and defeated by godzilla, Gigan's remains were taken into his home ship where he was upgraded further and given new technology which allows him to use portals as a means traverse long distance and host a whole new plethora of attacks. he can also control halo like energy fields that can protect him from heavy blows and cause injure to foes. Along side his old abilities he is Able to switch between blade and saw in an instant allowing for quick and flexible attacks. His upgraded cybernetics also allow him to go into a camouflage mode making him temporarily invisible. he is also extremely agile and fast being an incredibly dangerous foe with an equally sinister demeanor. and seismic megalon: After being wounded by monster zero Megalon retreated to the safety of the subterranean realm, but became ill with an alien pathogen carried by monster zero, the Seatopians noticed their god's rapidly deteriorating health and begrudgingly made a deal with a scientific organization on surface. The organization had created a genetic enhancement tool, which they planned to use on Mothra as a means to make her strong enough to take on the ever evolving Godzilla. Though they needed to test it first and this was their chance, the giant beetle was given an injection of the adaptation agent at first it seemed to only worsen his condition as he went dormant for while within the ground. After two months of rest the kaiju Awoke and molted shedding his old carapace and revealing his new and improved form. The beetle could now release a pulse of intense energy from his body hotter than the surface of the sun, and his Carapace became thicker and even more durable than it already was. Because of the virus infection carrying some of Ghidorah's DNA Megalons energy beam became even more destructive and his wing membranes thickened allowing for fast space travel. His second pair of limbs now boast two burning blades along side his drills capable of slicing through steel like butter. Now with his geothermic bullets, he spit a corrosive lava at foes.

This is in much later events of Deicide, where they get upgrades both gigan and megalon because megalon deserves it. For now they are still their regular forms.

[zinjanthropusboisei]

it's a slow process getting used to a new university but in the last two days i've gotten invited on a field trip and to a geothermal drilling ground breaking so I'm definitely meeting the right people so far :)

[sunsetsands]

Once more I have made a collection of half decent xenobiological pencil sketches. Unlike the other ones I’ve done, though, this time I’ve chosen a few designs and concepts to elaborate on and give more of a background, specifically the ones I thought weren’t horrible. This will be split into multiple posts due to the image limit on mobile, since my phone has all of the photos on it. Second part here.

These are the full pages of drawings. Zoomed in screenshots will be given for all of the curated creatures.

This is a towerleg, a rather tall species native to a very Earthlike planet. They typically reside in fields, meadows, and valleys, where they travel in herds to search for food, primarily large plants. On average, they are about 34 feet/10 meters tall. Those things radiating out from the central disc of its head are eyestalks, and the long appendage coming out from the front is an arm, which also has some simple eyes on it.

Towerlegs are intelligent, but not quite sapient, and have no organized society, but may one day develop one given the right circumstances. If they ever do, their immense size may hinder their ability to develop space travel, though it's far from impossible for them to come up with a solution.

This is a j'hguh, a name I definitely didn't create via keysmashing. All they ever really do is plod around in marshes. I can't imagine they would be particularly difficult to recreate in Spore.

Bobblyts are fairly small sophonts, at only around a foot and a half tall. Their centers of civilization are usually more vertically-oriented, which they navigate by climbing on walls and ceilings, something I'm not actually sure is possible at their size. Rather than communicating verbally, most of their languages are comprised of coordinated arm movements. The large spherical thing is a semitranslucent sac containing their brain, as well as a few other major organs. The sac is much sturdier than it looks.

The main issue I’ve been running into with this design is that I haven’t been able to get it to work in 3d space, specifically regarding how the orb is connected to the rest of the body. Once I figure that out, the rest will probably come naturally, but it's a pretty difficult wall to overcome in the meantime.

These are yubotes, an aquatic sophont species native to a cold ocean planet. They move around using jet propulsion organs near their backs, which aren't visible in any of these drawings. Without access to fire, most of their cities are powered by either geothermal electricity or marine currents. Technologically, they are far more advanced than humans, and are typically trained in engineering from a very young age, meaning most of them are prodigies when it comes to inventing new tools and technologies. I have no idea where their mouth is.

More details may be added in the future if my worldbuilder's disease flares up again.

[a-legacy-not-to-be-forgotten]

SequenceShift AU Locations

Since I already covered the main cast, I figured it'd be best to tacke the setting next. They are...vastly different from the ones in UT and UTY, so let's dive in.

The Remnants

The Remnants are pretty much the Ruins/Dark Ruins of this game. They're almost identical, aside from the fact that the Remnants are based more off of Japanese architecture compared to the occidental style of the Ruins. A few monsters live her, including Chujin, who has taken residence in Ceroba's childhood estate (there's also a hidden office there, which is only accessible on Neutral/Vengeance Routes). Dalv also lives there, helping maintain a corn field that he and Chujin set up.

Lakeside

Lakeside is the Snowdin equivalent. It's pretty much exactly what the name implies and is based off of the rural Japanese countryside. My idea was it used to be a cold and snowy place before the Swelterstone was excavated to act as the Underground's artificial sun, which terraformed the place into what it is nowadays. There's a small village set up here, known for its production of honey and vast fields of flowers. Moray and Mooch are set up here, keeping an eye out for any humans who exit the Remnants, along with the Dog Warrior Auxiliaries of the Royal Rangers (aka the Canine Unit from the OG Undertale).

Sand Dunes

The Sand Dunes...are the Dunes, basically. Okay, there's a bit more to it than that. In SS, it used to be Waterfall from the original, until the Swelterstone terraformed it, too, and unlike Lakeside, it wasn't for the best. It's still livable, of course, just really fucking hot. It has a lot of dense brush and canyons that used to be rivers. The Oasis, Wild East, and Sunnyside Farm are all still around, and of course, Starlo himself is based out here.

Frostpeak

Frostpeak takes the role of Hotland. It's a tall mountainous region, which takes inspiration from IRL Mount Fuji and the Grizzlies Mountain Range in RDR2 (my boyfriend is in the process of playing the game rn so). Currently, it's the least fleshed out, storywise. I don't have much for it rn, besides an entrance to the Steamworks as well as a gift shop at the summit.

Steamworks

Steamworks is fairly identical to how it is in UTY, while also having elements from the Lab. The main difference is, since there's no CORE in this AU, it acts as the primary source of power generation for the Underground, tapping into geothermal energies beneath Frostpeak. In addition, there's also the Lower Levels expansion of the facility, which takes the place of the True Lab and houses its own secrets. Martlet, the Royal Scientist, is based out in here, along with Axis, the Guardener, and most of the robots from the original Steamworks.

New Kingdom

The New Kingdom (yeah, Ceroba's naming skills are on par with Asgore's) takes the place of New Home, acting as the Capital of the Underground. It's a sprawling city which mixes in both traditional edo architecture with a more modern metropolis. Best example I can think of is something along the lines of modern Kyoto. This location also houses the Ketsukane Palace, where none other than the Empress herself awaits the seventh human...

And that's the general summary. If you guys want any further details, feel free to poke me!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Nation of Change:

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Chris Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, as the next Secretary of Energy, raising alarm among environmentalists and climate advocates. Wright, a prominent figure in the fossil fuel industry and a major Republican donor, has long advocated for the continued use of oil and gas as essential energy sources. His nomination signals a clear pivot in U.S. energy policy, prioritizing fossil fuel production over renewable energy initiatives.

Chris Wright has built his career in the energy sector, leading Liberty Energy, a company specializing in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and natural gas extraction. Wright is also a board member of a modular nuclear reactor company and has worked in various energy fields, including nuclear, solar, and geothermal. However, his staunch advocacy for fossil fuels has defined his public persona.

Wright describes himself as “a lifelong environmentalist” and has acknowledged that “climate change is a real problem.” Yet, in 2023, he dismissed the urgency of transitioning to renewable energy, claiming, “There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy” and “there is no climate crisis and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.” These statements reflect his skepticism toward mainstream scientific consensus on climate change and its connection to extreme weather events.

His industry ties extend to influential figures like Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma fracking billionaire and Trump adviser, who called Wright “a really, really sharp individual” and championed his nomination. Wright has publicly argued that fossil fuels are indispensable for global development, stating in a 2023 interview with CNBC, “The world runs on oil and gas, and we need that.”

Trump’s nomination of Wright aligns with his campaign promises to boost fossil fuel production beyond the record levels achieved under the Biden administration. Trump has also announced the formation of a new Council of National Energy, which will oversee energy permitting, production, and regulation. Doug Burgum, the nominee for Secretary of the Interior, will chair the council.

In a statement announcing Wright’s nomination, Trump praised him as “a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy” and credited him with launching “the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics.”

The nomination has been met with polarized reactions. Industry leaders have celebrated Wright’s appointment as a victory for energy independence and market stability. Environmental groups, however, have condemned the decision, warning of its potential impact on climate change mitigation efforts and clean energy development.

Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, described the appointment as “not surprising but still appalling.” Similarly, Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Wright’s nomination “a disastrous mistake.” Wong emphasized, “The Energy Department should be doing all it can to develop and expand the energy sources of the 21st century, not trying to promote the dirty fuels of the last century.”

Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed concern that Trump’s administration would become “the oiliest administration since George W. Bush.”

[atomicachronicles]

Author's single explanation:

What is Atomica Chronicles? Well, it's a work-in-progress tale set in a retro sci-fi fantasy world, somewhere between 1910 and 1940, give or take a few improbable inventions/ takes of mine. I do my best to keep things simple, well, simple-ish, enough for people to maybe follow along, I'm still quite new to this Tumblr thing :))

Long Explanation:

In this alternate fantasy-sci-fi Earth, the sun has dimmed, its once-warm embrace now a feeble flicker. The planet is a frozen shell of its former self, a wasteland where humanity still thrives to survive amid a landscape both alien and familiar. The geography has transformed under the relentless siege of cold weather and war, blending the unimaginable with the bizarre.

Life on Earth has adapted in strange and sinister ways. Gigantic, crystalline trees of ice-metal hybrid material sprout from the ground, their branches chiming eerily in the winds. These “Cryoboros” trees harvest what little sunlight remains, storing energy to warm the thin atmosphere around them. Meanwhile, the fauna has evolved a similar resilience: phosphorescent wolves with coats of metallic fibers hunt prey beneath the aurora, and herds of six-legged, fur-clad “Polar Crawlers” migrate across the tundra. The Rockies, the Himalayas, and the Andes are no longer majestic peaks they're colossal glaciers, their jagged ridges softened by centuries of snowfall. Crevasses glow faintly from the trapped bioluminescent algae beneath, a cruel irony of light in the cold void. Vast ice fields stretch to every horizon, interspersed with frozen remnants of lakes and rivers. The once-vital Mississippi is now a glacial highway, its flow stilled forever.

The oceans are frozen from shore to shore, their surfaces fractured into jagged, shifting ice plates. Below these frigid barriers, geothermal vents sustain strange and alien life bioluminescent creatures that thrive in the dark depths. Above, the sky is a pale, hazy gray, occasionally slashed with streaks of auroras. The heavens are punctuated by airships and megastructures that break through the barrier known as the clouds. The only real sunny beaches are lined across the equator, as it is the only part of the world that has a clear purplish-blue sky.

Across the remaining countries, skyscrapers and symbols of progress now serve as frigid obelisks, their Art Deco facades encased in layers of frost. Below them lie frozen streets, buried under snow, where neon signs flicker weakly, powered by forgotten technologies, and large megastructures litter the world. Other megastructures around forgotten regions remain unfinished due to the ongoing war.

[bacteriashowdown]

Armatimonadota

Group: Terrabacteria

Gram-stain: Negative

Etymology: For Armatimonas rosea. From the Latin "armatus", meaning "armoured', and "monas", meaning "unit", for the hard bacterial colonies that resemble a sole armoured unit.

About: Armatimonadota is a phylum with members that are abundant in geothermal environments and some marine sediments, where they may constitute up to 10% of the bacterial populations. Despite this, Armatimonadota were first cultivated in 2011, and today, only four species have been cultivated (though others have been isolated or detected through molecular analysis).

Of these four species, all are anaerobic and chemoheterotrophic. One species, Chthonomonas calidirosea, is an obligate thermophile, and was first isolated from geothermically heated soil at Hell's Gate, New Zealand. The other three species are mesophilic and were found in beech bark, a ginseng field (soil), and freshwater reeds. All Armatimonadota form similar colonies that are hard, round, and either pink or ivory colored. Their closest relative as a phylum is Abditibacteriota.

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

Viewers turning in for the track and field events at the Summer Games in Paris next week might just do a double-take: Instead of the usual rust-colored reddish hue, the track is purple.

The new, eye-catching color will serve as the backdrop for runners competing at the Stade de France, the country’s largest stadium, located in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. The track is made by Mondo, a company based in Alba, Italy, that has made every track used at the Olympics since 1976.

The color was mainly an aesthetic choice, as purple, blue and green make up the palette for the competition venues at this year’s games. The design actually incorporates three separate colors: lavender for the track itself, darker purple for the service areas and gray for the exterior curves at each end.

Even the glue used to adhere the track to its asphalt base—2,800 pots in total—is purple, just in case any becomes visible.

“The big part of the job was to come up with a track that was different from what we had seen … to go a little bit outside the box,” says Alain Blondel, an Olympic decathlete who now serves as the sports manager for the Paris games, to Olympics.com’s Nicolas Kohlhuber.

This is the first time an Olympic track has been purple. But it’s not uncommon for athletics venues around the world to play around with color. For example, since 1986, Boise State University has famously eschewed the traditional green-colored turf for its football field, opting instead for a shocking shade of bright blue.

Color aside, the Paris track is unique for several other reasons. For one, it incorporates the shells of bivalve mollusks, like mussels and clams. Ahead of the games, track-maker Mondo began partnering with a mussel farming and fishing company called Nieddittas to give used shells a second life.

Staff at Nieddittas harvest, clean and prepare the shells—which are made primarily of calcium carbonate—so they can be ground into a powder that can be incorporated into the track material. The shells would have otherwise been headed to a landfill, so the process transforms waste into something useful. It also reduces the need for mining, which is how manufacturers usually obtain calcium carbonate.

All told, 50 percent of the Paris track comes from recycled materials, reports BBC’s Padraig Belton.

This innovative use of recycled natural materials aligns with the goals of the International Olympic Committee, which vowed to make the Summer Games in Paris the most sustainable Olympics yet. Other sustainability efforts include bike parking at many venues, more plant-based food options for spectators, 100 percent locally sourced renewable energy, a geothermal cooling system at the Olympic Village and aquatic center seats made from recycled plastic bottle caps, among many others.

The track’s design and materials may also help athletes perform their best. The Paris track has the same base as the one used at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, with some minor modifications, per reporting by Reuters’ Manuel Ausloos and Vincent Daheron. At those games, athletes set three world records and 12 Olympic records—and officials expect even more records to fall next week in Paris.

“The first indications are that it will be a very, very good track,” Blondel told the Associated Press’ (AP) Jerome Pugmire in April. “If we see athletes with personal bests on the scoreboard, it means we did a good job.”

For this iteration of the track, Mondo researchers improved upon the new polymeric material first introduced in Tokyo. They also used computer algorithms to further refine the optimal shape and size of the air bubbles within the lower layer of the track, which help absorb and then rebound the energy from the runner’s foot striking the ground.

The vulcanized rubber provides good grip and resistance for Paralympic athletes who use wheelchairs and prosthetics. The track has also been specially designed to complement the latest generation of running shoes.

“For the track, we only see the aesthetics, but there is great work that goes into the underlayer,” says Alessandro Piceli, a research and development manager at Mondo, to the Guardian’s Sean Ingle.

Mondo leaders say the Paris track will be 2 percent faster than the one used in Tokyo, per the BBC. But, in 2020, runners also got a boost from hot temperatures and new shoe spike technology, per the Guardian. It remains to be seen how the track will affect athletes’ times, but its creators are confident we will see records fall in Paris.

“The athletes will find this track to be more reactive and better suited for their competition,” said Maurizio Stroppiana, vice president of Mondo’s sport division, to the AP’s Andrew Dampf and Luca Bruno in March.

[raspberry-gloaming]

ive recently properly got into the hunger games, and me being me one of the things that interests me most is the names and worldbuilding! so here's some quick thoughts on why foxface being called Finch can or does make sense.

Many hg names (excluding d12) are dependant on their status on the urban-rural scale of things, as well as their industries. A lot of people think district 5 is completely urban - and I get that. when you think power, electricity and all that, yeah you may think hulking, brutalistic architecture and smog and smoke and city. But that's not the only way to harvest power. As the hunger games trilogy takes place at least a couple centuries into the future, its not likely that natural gas and crude oil will be the main sources of energy. While online sources don't agree on a certain time frame for this limit, one thing they do agree is that those reserves (and this is the whole of the us not just one district) won't be lasting to reach a hunger games canon timeline time.

And in the film's there's a dam shown! a hydroelectric dam, showing they use renewable energy as at least part of their power resources. With a dam like that, we can theorise they use other water based types of renewable energy, such as tidal or wave. in addition some places also have wind turbines out at sea instead of on land. so overall this suggests district 5 is by a tidal river and/or the sea.

In addition, other forms of renewable power come from rural areas. Rapeseed and soy are the two main biodiesel fuels used for biofuels, where plants are combusted to produce electricity. that's not exactly urban - far more an 11 or 9 vibe.

So maybe Foxface comes from a rural area, or maybe Finch is a name originally from the biofuel more agricultural areas that was popularised or her parents just liked it.

So it's quite likely that with its likely cities, power plants, dams, wave and tidal energy sources, solar farms, wind turbines and biofuels, five is one of the most diverse human environmental districts. that makes it interesting to me due to how that differs from the straight up yup that's fields or yup that's quarries and a merchant sector that many of the other districts seem to have.

so give me district five characters named Finch, or Tydal or Albert or Joule or Zephyr or geothermal nuclear powerplant the second this place can do so many name vibes compared to a lot of the other districts if you look at how their naming tends to work.